ConVirt: the New Tool in Your Virtual Toolbox

Virtualization is now a staple of the modern enterprise. As more and more
shops switch to the virtual paradigm, managing those new virtual
resources is a critical part of any deployment. For admins using
Microsoft- or VMware-based hypervisors, powerful management tools
are available to keep their virtual houses in order. Unfortunately, those
products and their accompanying tools come with a hefty price tag. The
good news is that inexpensive open-source virtualization is on the rise,
driven in large part due to its low performance overhead. However,
one of the primary obstacles to large-scale open-source virtualization
adoption has been the lack of robust management tools. virt-manager is
the most well known and used, and although it's a great tool, it does not hold a
candle to the enterprise tools put out by the big vendors. That's where
ConVirt comes in.

ConVirt is an open-source tool capable of managing multiple types of
hypervisors including Xen, KVM and now VMware from a single pane of
glass. When evaluating ConVirt for your needs, it is best to think of
it as a front end to the native tools of the hypervisors that provides
extended features not available in a standalone hypervisor. Although there
is some overlap with virt-manager, ConVirt adds an additional level
of enterprise manageability. ConVirt is currently offered in three tiers:
Open Source, Enterprise and Enterprise Cloud. This article focuses
on the open-source version. The open-source version does not include the
ability to manage VMware items, so the testing environment for this article contains
only Xen and KVM servers. Even though I don't cover it here, the ability
to manage VMware hosts along with KVM and Xen hosts from the same pane of
glass should peak the interests of many admins.

Let's get started by installing the ConVirt Management Server or
CMS. ConVirt can be installed on most flavors of Linux or as a
pre-configured virtual appliance that can be imported into a KVM or Xen
server. I chose to deploy my CMS on a physical server running CentOS 6.2
to allow plenty of storage space (the virtual appliance is roughly 2–3GB
in size), although the appliance probably will get you up and running
faster. Make sure that whichever installation method you select, that you open
all the necessary ports on your CMS and on your managed servers/hosts
that you want to manage through the console (TCP 8081, 8006, VNC ports and
SSH).

The term "managed server" refers to those hosts running a hypervisor
that is managed by ConVirt and can be used interchangeably with the term
"host". Follow the installation procedures available on the Convirture
Wiki site to perform the installation of the CMS. Most of the install
is handled by a script that pulls down the dependencies and installs
MySQL. I won't go into finer detail on the server install, as it is well
documented on the site and I would just be repeating the information here.

After the CMS install is complete, access your management page
at http://youripaddress:8081 (Figure 1). Use the default login of
"admin/admin" to bring up the main console. For those used to VMware's
vSphere, this interface will feel familiar. The layout is broken into three
main panels: a navigation panel on the left, a display panel for selected
items in the middle of the page and a panel at the bottom for displaying
task results (Figure 2).

Comments

Comment viewing options

Greetings! I've been reading your blog for a while now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from Atascocita Texas! Just wanted to mention keep up the good work! Link Bid Directory List.com

So they even want money for this web page.....
Maybe someone should finally tell linux developers that there is something that is called an application. You know it has a gui, it actually is doing something and so on. You know the software - not the webpages or yet another simple whatever crap all fanboys are excited about even they can't use it as it have no functionality.
Anyone?